It has for some time been the practice in the operation of transit vehicle control signaling systems and particularly for rubber-tired transit vehicles to divide the track signal rails into a plurality of signaling blocks that are electrically insulated from each other. Such a rubber-tired transit vehicle system is described in an article published in the Conference Record of the 28th IEEE Vehicular Technology Group in relation to a meeting in Denver in March, 1978, and entitled "Atlanta Airport People Mover" in which there is described a guideway for such a transit system, including an electrically grounded guide beam which is located in the center of the vehicle support tracks, and including a power distribution apparatus consisting of five rails mounted on top of the guide beam. The three top rails distribute three-phase AC power, and the fourth and fifth rails provide guidance for the main collector shoes as well as a ground for the vehicle system, and are used for the provision of speed command signals to control the vehicles and detect the presence of the vehicles in each signal block.
The desired performance of such rubber-tired transit vehicles requires that the speed command signals to the cars be of a continuous nature even when the speed command signal changes. Typically, command signals are inductively coupled from current in the signal rails to the cars. As a car bridges the boundary between two command signal zones or blocks, currents of both the rear signal block and the front signal block can appear in the front signal block ahead of the car to cause a confusion zone. This has resulted in excessive control system transport delays that can cause poor system performance. The path of these rear command signal currents into the front signal block results from the need to keep the vehicle grounded for passenger safety reasons.